RichardusH

A bit off topic maybe, a poor photo and a larger scale than 2mm/ft, but it's Adams related. Saw the Adams T3 at Swanage today. Wow!

Am I right in thinking that's an LSWR (or WSLR) Adams 415? If so I'd be grateful for some info on the chassis and mechanism used if possible . Richard

Here's an update on my SDJR Class A mentioned in my post of Feb 15. The chimney took 4 attempts, it's also slightly off vertical at the moment. I've still to add the tender springs (external ones above the running plate of course), boiler backplate & crew, plus tidy up a few things and repair the tender RH handrails. I can't seem to find any tender springs of the appropriate size so think I will make my own. It was painted using Vallejo Model Color Prussian Blue darkened with some Vallejo Model Air Panzer Grey. The decals are from the Fox MIdland Railway lining & SDJR lettering sets, I managed to get the letter spacing on the front buffer wrong. Richard

Thanks Oli. I did the chimney work on a couple of lathes, one a Chinese mini-lathe (Seig SC3 with 7" swing) and the other one of the £30 or so micro lathes which consists of a horizontal motorised chuck mounted on an aluminum bed. I've amended the former to take a vertical slide and made a start on the base by using an 8mm diameter slot drill to form a curve. I then opened this out using 120 grade emery cloth wrapped round a drill shank, however I arranged for the diameter of the shank plus the thickness of the cloth to be the same as the smokebox diameter, so it sounds like I should have used a slightly bigger shank. Given that I had a good drawing of the chimney (from one of Bob Essery's books) I should have been able to get the chimney diameter pretty well bang on, however it didn't work out that way as the cutting tools that I had were too large. I've now ground down an HSS blank to produce narrower RH & LH cutting tools so hopefully that will do the trick. I used the latter micro lathe for manual turning with the chimney mounted on a spigot. I agree I didn't get the flare fine enough, reducing the drawing down to a 2mm size sounds like a good idea for the freehand work. I use a couple of square section gravers (plus various files) for the free hand turning resting them on a simple tool rest. This seems a bit hit and miss as despite trying to get the cutting point on the vertical centre line of the lathe and at a sensible angle I find that sometimes it cuts well, and other times it just rubs. I don't know if anyone has any tips? Richard

Here's the current state of an SDJR Class A that I'm making. It is scratch built and makes use of an nBrass dome & safety valve. It was my first attempt at turning my own chimney and it has turned out a bit too tall & slender so I will have to make another. It is powered by a tender drive using the Tramfabriek 7x16 motor with a worm at both ends Richard

I think they are just mis-labelled on the Phoenix site. I bought some Carrs 179 Solder Cream from Phoenix about a couple of months ago which was declared as as lead-free in their specifications, but it's identical to the product I bought from C & L Finescale a couple of years ago (code C1016 Sn 62/Pb36/Ag2) Richard